How To Charge the Right Price for Your Work

'The Rainbow Painter' watercolour and ink illustration

Hello!

I wanted to write about how to price your work today; it's one of those subjects that can be quite mind boggling if you're just starting out on your creative selling venture, but also an icky one for those who are already selling their wares and don't feel as if they're getting the right price for their lovely stuff.

Moolah is a funny subject, and most people feel a bit self concious talking about it - luckily I'm not one of those people and I'm happy to share my thoughts and some little bits of wisdom on the subject of selling online with you here.  I have learnt many lessons along the way, and I hope what I'm going to share with you will be useful.

First off, there's a story.

Once upon a time there was an artist who used to paint bright and colourful pictures.  She wasn't confident about selling her work so she would give it away for free.  If someone in her family, or a friend said they liked a painting, she would give it to them and this went on for some time.  However, an emptiness and a slight feeling of annoyance was growing.  The artist knew that alot of effort had gone into her paintings, and she was thrilled that other people liked them, but the balance of the energy exchange was all out of kilter.  

For 100's of years, people have used money as a tool of exchange - in the olden days, people used to trade in 2 piglets for a cow, that kind of thing...but nowadays we tend to use cash.  Whichever way you look at it, it's still an exchange which keeps the balance happy.  What's the balance?  it's this:  You and your customer both receive value from your product ~ you get some well deserved moolah for creating something marvellous, and your customer gets to become the new owner of your marvellous creation.  Balanced energy exchange ~ all happy ~ Hurrah!! 

So anyways, back to the story:  The artist here who had been giving away her work and getting nothing given back in return, was starting to feel pretty lousy...and she realised that in order to feel better, and for the beneficiarys of her pictures to feel better too, then she had to start charging a price for her work.

So how do you work out what the right price is?

This can seem like the hardest thing in the world to work out, but it's actually pretty easy.

First off, you need to work out your costs and come up with a total.   When I say costs, I mean things like materials and sundries such as box canvases, paints, mounts for prints, paper, printing inks, shipping materials, postage costs etc...Time is also a factor that you might want to consider.  Many artists find that they earn below the minimum wage per hour when they divide up the price of their painting by the number of hours it took to create it!  Write everything down in a notebook; you might be surprised by how much you are spending (both materials and time) when you see it all written down in front of you.

Now, you need to figure out your profit.  No point spending all that precious time and energy creating something hot, just to charge the recipient for the materials it's cost you - you're not going to feel too great unless you're earning something for your effort.

If you're still unsure what to charge...

HOT TIP: Have a look online at other artists or craftspeople who's work is of a similar nature and level to your own.  You can easily find these people by visiting Folksy or Etsy.  See what they are charging for their products, find the average and use these prices as a guideline when pricing up your own work.  It doesn't hurt to do a bit of homework and see what the competition is up to.

Next question you want to ask yourself is: "Does this price feel right to me?"

Does it make you feel good?  Does it feel uncomfortable, like it's a bit too much?  Does it feel like it's not enough?  Only you can be the judge of this; only you know what went into the item you're pricing, so listen to your gut on this one.

The right price will feel good, and that you're getting what the product is truly worth to you.  When you get that feeling, that's your price - but feel free to tweak it accordingly.  

I often revisit my own gallery pages and investigate the online marketplaces to compare how my stuff sits in relation to others.  I don't want to price myself out of the market by charging too much, and I don't want to underprice myself just for the sake of saying I got a sale (a sale under those circumstances is a bitter sweet affair I can tell you!).  Whilst in Cornwall recently I made a point of noticing what galleries were charging for prints and originals - the recession is showing and generally the prices of original art is down a tad and I like to make a habit of keeping an eye on the market.  I sometimes have to change my prices if the cost of my materials, or shipping goes up.  It all has to be reflective or I'm making a loss and that tips the Balance into the negative for me.

I hope that this post has been of help to some of you who have been struggling with making the first steps at selling your work - listen to your instinct and don't be afraid to ask for what you're worth.

Big love

Julia x

BIG PS:  Thank you SO MUCH for all your gorgeous and kind comments about the magazine feature, it made my day to discover and read them all!  Have a happy weekend, see you soon.

Pumpkins, Strawberries and Joy

Hello!  Hope you are well!

Today I am sharing my hand illustrated Christmas cards with you!  I've been looking forward to doing this, but had to keep them under wraps for a while - but at last, here they are!

I wanted to create a handful of special cards that would show lots of little images reflecting the festive season...tiny pictures and words came to mind, and so after some sketching and doodling, I came up with these.  Each hand painted tile is mounted in relief of a white A5 sized card, and they're blank inside for your own message.  Seasonal greetings have been hand written around the edge of the artwork, and each card is signed by me.

The individual tiles are hand painted in watercolour, with a shimmer glaze for added sparkle and finished with ink.  There are only four left at present and I've got them up for sale in my Folksy Shop if you wish to take a peek.

Here's a close up:

I do hope you like them!

So, wandering away from All Things Christmassy, did you all have a ghoulish Halloween weekend?  My Small Person declared very loudly that she did NOT like witches at all, and would not dress up.  She said she thought the Scary Heads in the shops were horrid and did not like it.  Instead, she would dress up as a fairy and would stretch to helping with pumpkin scooping but that was it.

So pumpkin scooping it was, and not a witches hat in sight!

Our Halloween was very murky and foggy - very appropriate spooky conditions actually, and our lantern blazed marvellously outside in the gloom.  Miss Fairy spent much time back and forth looking at it out of the window, and talking to it.

"Mummy.  Pumpkin Head is sad.  He wants to come in for some tea!"

We are now looking forward to bonfire night - must get myself a decent pair of wellies this year unless I want to come home caked in mud like Farmer Barlemow again! And then it will be Christmas...although in some respects it feels like it already!!  But before we all go demented with the sights of heavily decorated department stores (with Mariah Carey piped in for good measure), I thought I'd mention another little print I'm releasing...and this, I hope you will like, because it harks back to late summer, not a whiff of Christmas about it (unless you would like to buy one as a Christmas present of course!! :D)

Taken from the original painting 'Strawberries & Daisies' - this print will be available on my website, and eventually in my Folksy and Etsy emporiums for £14.00.  It comes mounted with a back board, and each print is hand titled and signed.

Each print is also gift wrapped in bright tissue paper and twine...

...and don't forget, UK mainland customers can take advantage of Free Shipping!

Well there is much to be done these days, Im doing my best to visit Blogland as much as I can, and I've enjoyed catching up with a few of you - Im looking forward to my mid-afternoon cuppa when I will make time to have another roam!  For now though, there is work to be done, a Small Person to keep amused so I will wave Au-revoir for now.  Thank you so much for stopping by, it means such a lot that you do, and also for taking time to comment, I know its a busy time of year for many of you, which makes it all the more special when you do drop in to say Hello.

Sending you caramel lattes, warm mittens and love

Julia x

Joining Those Popcorn Grannies

Hello dear patient crochet friends (and other friends who don't crochet but are happy to scroll down to the latter part of the blog post for the other stuff that isn't wool related).

I've finally got around to doing you a little How To Join Popcorn Granny Squares Tutorial, and here it is for you.  As usual, the crochet terminology is USA, so if you work in UK stitches, just amend accordingly and it should all go swimmingly.

First of all, take two of your squares and join them evenly, corner to corner with the good sides facing in.  On my grannies there are two stitches per corner, try and match these up.

Push your hook through the corner stitch (this will be the left stitch of the two corner stitches as you look at them), and pull a loop of wool through.

Wrap your yarn around your hook again and pull it through the first loop on your hook.

Take your hook out of the loop, yes - don't worry it's quite safe, and pull on the loop to make it a little larger with your fingers.  Next, feed the short tail end of yarn through it and tug on the ball of wool end to make a secure knot.

Once the knot is firmly in place and you're happy it's not all going to unravel, wrap the yarn around your hook:

Push your hook underneath the two stitch loops on each square that lay on the outside, wrap your yarn around your hook and pull through another loop (2 on hook).

As per a slip stitch, pull the second loop through the first loop; one loop left on hook:

Push your hook through the next stitch, through the two outside loops of the stitches and pull a loop through...

Continue in this way, slip stitching along to the end of the row.

At this point, you can carry on around the corner, adding another square, or cast off in your usual way, sewing in your ends.

The front looks something like this when you join at the back, but you can also join on the front if you wish to have colourful strips running through your work, and instead use SC instead of SS if you prefer.  Just put the backs together at the beginning instead of the good sides facing.

As usual, I hope my tutorial makes sense, please do holler if you think I've missed an important bit out or if there is something you don't quite understand and i'll try my best to help.

_____________________________________

For those of you who have just joined us and skipped the tutorial; 'Hello!'

Well we've had some wonderfully bright, sunny days of late.  The moors close to our home look gloriously wild and vast at the moment...

And to say it's almost November, things still look decidedly Septemberish to me, very green wouldn't you say!

This time of year is all about crunchy walks in the woods, big blue skies and cascades of crimson, gold and lemon yellow leaves.  It's also about cosying up in nice scarves, warm socks, eating roast dinners and lighting candles as the darkness draws itself in ever earlier...it's starting a new crochet project (I caved in and bought Rowan Cocoon ~ more about that next time) and re-designing my note card collections.

Oh my, I am so happy with these...

Both sets of cards feature five of my most popular artworks, the choice of cards have been updated with some newer work and the boxes redesigned completely.  The only thing I haven't changed is the price, which is still £7.50 per box with free P&P to UK Mainland customers.

These boxes of cards would make a really nice gift for someone, or for yourself (why not!), and are available in my gallery shop here where you can have a look at the card images that come with each set.

They will also be available in my Etsy and Folksy shops within the next day or two.

Although it's still only October I'm finding myself rather busy with all things Christmas, so it's left little time for me to work on anything else!  I think I could do with advertising for a Little Helper.  

I did try engaging my three year old in a spot of leaflet printing the other day, and for a time she was delightedly making neat piles of freshly printed paper...but she got rather bored (after about six) and started pulling the leaflets through the printer before they'd actually finished printing...I discovered it before too many were ruined but needless to say, she was swiftly put onto house building duties in the lego department while I tidied up the mess.

Well, I must make an effort to visit Blogland now, as this last week I've hardly had the chance and I miss my little roamings and readings.  Do forgive me, life is rather full at times and the nice bits have to be shoved firmly to the bottom of the pile while the Important Stuff is dealt with.

Welcome also to some new followers, please do drop in and say Hello if you have the time, it's always lovely to hear from you!

Sending love and hot mugs of spicy pumpkin soup;  have a glowing and spooky Halloween weekend!

Much love, Julia x x x

Restless Days

Hello dear souls.

You find me in a restless and wistful state of mind at the moment. Do you ever feel like that? Like you can't settle long to any task, that life is held in limbo somehow, and the mind wanders aimlessly to places far away and lends itself to dreaming quite a lot.

And add to that mixture, unsurprisingly, the creative juices seem to have stopped flowing. All dried up, nothing doing.

Oh dear, it's a funny old state of affairs when life suddenly goes all tipsy like this without warning, and all the comfortable normal stuff is suddenly quite bland and very uninteresting.

I find my weary little mind asking some rather Big Questions too, about whether this part of the world really suits us any longer, but if it doesn't - what then? I find myself hankering for my life by the sea again, having a beach on the doorstep and always being amazed by that. I know, some of you may be reading this and thinking 'yep, we'd all like a bit of that!' but this thought is starting to drive me to distraction and the feeling of being landlocked in the middle of the UK is sending me quite claustrophobic!!

I don't want this to be a maudlin post, but I want to be a real person here and share what's really happening in my little world. Im going to continue musing, listening to the things that keep popping in my mind and see what evolves.

In the meantime, whilst my head is firmly ensconced in dreamland (where I live in an arty and bustling little beachside abode) I will share with you some pictures of some new Hand Illustrated greetings cards.

These are pencil and watercolour drawings on Canson watercolour paper,which has been mounted onto a blank white card, titled and signed...

...and both of them are available in my Folksy and Etsy shops ~ the links are in the sidebar :D

Similar cards have sold well before in the little gallery in Lincolnshire, and apparently some people like to buy them to frame as they are in effect, tiny original paintings!

I hope you like them!

This is quite a short post today, (a day later than usual my friends as yesterday I was to preoccupied to write anything) as Im off to town very soon. I want to welcome some new followers who have joined my blog recently and to thank you for stopping by with such nice comments - Im still in awe of the lovely people I have had the pleasure to meet through blogging and Im looking forward to meeting many more - oh, I must apologise too, been a bit poor on Blog Visiting this last week, but hopefully this post may go a short way to explaining why.

Hopefully normal service will soon be resumed and life will soon find a scoop of normality from somewhere to relieve this unsettled feeling.

Til next time, sending mucho love your way...

J x

Little Moments

(Tulips & Boats ~ Acrylic on paper)

Hello!

And 'Hello' to lots of scrumptious new followers too ~ thank you for visiting my little blog, it's lovely to have you here!

So...another week drifts by. I have been doing many little sketches in the quiet moments (the ones that appear when small hands are busy with the Play Doh) and I've also been having a little think about my paintings.

I was thinking about Affordable Art. When you are an artist, pricing work is a very Big Deal. You don't want to charge too much and price yourself out of the market, but you don't want to under price yourself either, as for one it makes you look a bit amateurish and secondly the price is not reflecting the time, skill and materials it has taken to produce an original piece. I hope that my work is reasonably priced taking all those things into consideration, and I just wanted to share a bit about that side of my work with you.

As my thoughts wandered on, I drew the conclusion that there are a lot of people out there that would probably love to own an original piece of art, but just can't afford it (financially speaking, it's not been the best of times has it).

So I had an idea.

Affordable Originals.

The picture above is the first one of a little series I'm going to be working on at random (in between bigger pieces).

They will be painted onto Fabriano acid free paper and will come with a mount. And they will all be 5" x 5" square (the image that is) and cost £45.00 which includes P&P costs in the UK.

Do you think it's a good idea?

I won't be doing any prints of these either, they will literally be one off pieces. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as I would dearly like to make my work available to a wider audience.

~~~~~~~~~~

The other little artist in our home has also been busy drawing again, and I had to share this latest little gem with you which she drew after seeing lambs in the field:

There she is pointing to the wavy lines and telling me that that is the grass.

I love her little drawings!

Other delicious Little Moments have occured this week. The other morning I awoke early before anyone else and tiptoed downstairs to enjoy the peace and quiet with a nice mug of coffee. As I sat by the window, I noticed a little visitor raiding my wild strawberry basket for Nesting Materials ~ I'm in awe of little birds like that, their tenacious strength and determination to survive and rear little families in the wild...

These beautiful daffodils which were marked 'end of season' have produced gasps of delight from us, their chubby buds opening to reveal petticoat layers of pale cream and buttery yellow petals.

...talking of flowers, I've decided to update my Folksy shop soon with some pretty floral corsages, here are two of them to give you an idea of what Im on about:

...they're made with Rowan wools and finished with a nice hand made ceramic button all the way from a little place in Cornwall. They will come in their own little gauzy turquoise gift bag as well.

I miss making things like this as regularly as I used to, but there are not enough hours in the day!

I also miss making things like this patchwork lavender heart...

...I made this for our home a little while back and forgot to show you!

I don't get chance to get the sewing machine out that much these days actually, my one day of free time is usually spent painting which indulges my creative spirit once a week and that is a Good Thing for now, but for the times in between...?

I discovered that if I didn't indulge my creative spirit, I started to feel a bit trapped and demented. Honestly, I had serious withdrawal symptoms (irritable, grumpy etc as I battled with too many ideas and not enough time to make them real) and so over time I have taught myself how to be creative every day so I don't get those feelings. When my daughter was first born, I struggled enormously with not having time to paint etc, a baby was far too time consuming and tiring for things like that and art was a random thing for a long while. I missed it too.

Since those early days, I have accepted that my time isn't always necessarily my own and I have broadened my horizons (creatively speaking).

Every day I try to do something, even if it's one row of crochet late evening, baking and decorating a cake, finger painting with the Little One, making shapes from clouds, or planting seeds... I learnt from being a Mum that creativity reaches into all manner of corners and isn't about just painting any more. As simple as it sounds it actually took me a while to understand that and sharing creative time with my daughter, and teaching her how to do things is often more rewarding than the rush of joy I get from completing a picture.

And... I have my sketch book for those ideas that absolutely and completely must come out of my head and onto the page at once! :D

I will leave you this week with another big thank you for all your lovely and kind comments, for taking the time to read my ramblings and pop in to see me, it's ever so nice of you and it makes me very happy that you do!

I wish you a Happy Bank Holiday weekend, and hope the sun peeps out of the forcast rain clouds for you!

Sending love

Julia x x x

Daffodils and Bunting

Daffodils and Bunting
Acrylic on box canvas 20x20cm

Hello people!

I hope this warm March day finds you well! Im pleased to be able to share the finished painting 'Daffodils and Bunting' with you! After being inspired by Surfer Rosa, I painted in some cotton reels as the thought of the blackbird coming to find a spare strand of thread to line his nest was very appealing. Of course, I then sat wondering what the cotton reels might be sitting there for, all very well to have a couple of reels on the window sill and why not - but I felt a bit more visual interest was necessary and the idea of bunting popped into my head, and it seemed to bring the picture together! Do you agree? Im going to start putting some of my originals into my Folksy shop ~ 'Little Blue Bird' ~ so you will be able to find this, and other paintings and prints available to buy there too!


This morning I awoke at 6am - I lay under the warmth of the duvet for a few minutes but realised that the light coming from behind the curtains was tempting me to get up. Im not usually up this early, and generally Im the sort that will turn over and go back to sleep for another hour until the soft thudding of Little Girl's footsteps on the landing awaken us. But this morning, I felt compelled to be up before anyone else. I tiptoed downstairs, put on a pot of coffee and opened the backdoor...and thats when I realised what had happened.

Spring had arrived.

It's that wonderful moment that you get when the season is on the cusp of changing. A warm breeze was blowing (yes, at 6am - a warm wind) and I stood on the doorstep in my jammies breathing in this feeling of delight. It was here!! At last!! It's nothing actually noticeable, in fact, all looked the same outside as it did yesterday, but there was a very perceptible feeling of something in the air having shifted and changed. Oh isn't it delicious when Spring lands on your doorstep?!


The picture above, is another view of our lovely 'tops' looking out again over to Derbyshire. It was slightly hazy at 8:30 this morning as we drove over to Mum's to dispatch the Little One for a day of adventuring. Im very fond of that view, it's one of my favourites and sometimes feels as if the whole, beautiful world is spread out before me.


You can see that Spring has arrived, Im waxing lyrical and Im all over the place in a skippy happy sort of fashion today! Which leads me to more skippy happy stuff, of the crochet kind.

Ive made some hearts!

I was inspired a few weeks back by a post on Attic 24's blog, where she had designed and made the sweetest little hearts you ever did see. Now, I was quite smitten with them and searched the internet high and low for a pattern. But you know what its like, once you see something you like, you want that one - and none of the other patterns I found really did it for me. So, last night I spent a couple of hours working out my own pattern - Im nothing if not determined folks - and eventually, with a whole lot of tweaking and unravelling, came up with these, which I think look a bit like what I was after!

Im going to try and make a little chain of heart bunting, as I feel that our home is very much in need of some heart bunting! However, for now that will have to wait, as a new painting is about to be started! I was halfway through Daffodils and Bunting when an idea struck. Now, for me, this is not always a good thing, as it means that I get so excited by the new idea I become bored of what Im currently doing and discard it in order to get on with the new stuff. However, Im practising being disciplined, and did a few sketches to quench the excitement so that I could finish 'D&B' properly.


The next painting will feature a cat, and I hope to be able to share it with you soon.

I can't say Goodbye this week without saying 'Thank You' to everyone who has visited my blog to take part in the Sunny Spring Giveaway! Ive been delighted to find wonderful comments from old friends and new ones, and because of this Im discovering some wonderful new blogs, so thanks to all of you for stopping by! There is still chance to enter the giveaway, as it doesn't close until the 21st March - so if you would like to enter and haven't already, then please leave a comment on this post to guarantee a place in the draw, which takes place on Monday the 22nd.

I'm looking forward to catching up with your blogs, its been a busy old week here one way or another so apologies for not being able to get to as many blogs as I would like (and believe me, I like nothing more than a good hour of peaceful blog browsing, with cup of tea and something sweet and nice alongside!).

Have a warm, sunny weekend - I'll be posting again sometime on Monday so "Good Luck" to you, if you're in the draw!

Mucho love
Julia x x x